Privatizing Medicare

Medicare, the crown jewel in Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty and one of the
governments most popular programs, has been torpedoed under the guise of
"improving" it. Its demise comes as the consequence of stealth legislation
ruthlessly rammed through Congress by conservative Republicans and a few Democrats.
"Government by Juggernaut," editorialized TheWashington Post.

The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have
universal health care. Only in America is health care treated as a profit-making venture,
and the new Medicare bill was designed precisely with that as its guiding principle.

Consider these facts about Medicare:

 Since its inception in 1965, this program has reduced poverty
among the elderly by nearly two-thirds.

 Contrary to Medicare opponents, the program is not going
broke. The Medicare Part A Trust Fund (which is financed through payroll taxes paid by
workers and employers) will maintain a positive balance through 2026, according to the
Medicare Board of Trustees.

A major yet easily correctable defect in existing Medicare is the lack
of a prescription drug benefit. Advocates of Medicare reform exploited this vulnerability
by offering a drug benefit as the highlight of its legislation. But is this actually good
news? New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "As the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities points out, the bill will force millions of beneficiaries to pay
more for drugs, thanks to a provision that cuts off supplemental aid from Medicaid."

So much for prescription drug benefits. The insults to seniors and the
disabled only get worse.

The original Medicare program has consistently been so popular with its
subscribers that the profit-oriented HMOs and PPOs have been unable to compete
successfully. Writers of the new bill corrected this "inequity" by granting a
tax-free $12-billion supplement to the private providers so they could offer attractive
inducements to current Medicare subscribers. However, unlike Medicare, the HMOs and PPOs
will be free to cherry-pick the most healthy applicants and leave the least healthy in
Medicare. Over time, a weakened Medicare will then be forced to raise its premiums,
eventually pricing so many out of the program that Medicare will slowly "wither on
the vine," as Newt Gingrich put it, expressing his own wishes.

THE NEW BILL provides for Health Savings Accounts in which individuals
may invest $1,000 per year and couples $2,000, tax free, to help pay for medical expenses.
The result: another tax shelter for the rich.

The passage of the radical new legislation was aided by the surprising
vote of support by the directors of the 39-million-member AARP. More than 10,000 members,
feeling betrayed, resigned in protest the first week.

The payoff to supporters of the legislation is a blatant example of
government-for-sale. For instance, pharmaceutical manufacturers gave an average of $28,504
to each of the 204 Republicans who supported the bill, but only $8,112 to the 25
Republicans who opposed it. The Democrats were similarly rewarded.

The tactics by which the new Medicare bill was slipped through Congress
expose the dishonorable intentions of its authors. A committee made up mostly of
Republicans designed the bill, 681 pages long, in secret. This legislation is so
sweeping and of such historic significance that it deserved ample time for study and
debate. Yet, with barely two days for members to review the measure, the House GOP
leadership called for an up-or-down vote, at which time the Republicans discovered they
were two votes short of passage. The voting period traditionally is 15 minutes, but the
Republicans stretched that to almost three hours while its leaders stiff-armed and cajoled
enough recalcitrant and fatigued colleagues into voting for the bill in the early morning
hours. With President Bushs signature, privatization of Medicare is on the road to
completion.

Stay tuned, folks. Social Security is next.

Harry C. Kiely is a Medicare subscriber and a United Methodist minister living in
Silver Spring, Maryland.

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